Bitcoin-friendly employees can get paid with cryptocurrency thanks to BitPay’s new API

The payment processor BitPay has announced the beta release of their Bitcoin payroll API for employers. This new feature, designed for employers and payroll service providers, will allow W-2 workers (regular employee or contractor through an agency) to directly receive a portion or their entire net pay in Bitcoin.

The API is currently available only for employers in Georgia or South Carolina, as well as licensed payroll providers in the United States, while the testing period is not finished.

The company has been developing the payroll API to pay its own team with 20 full-time workers. Every one of them receives a portion of their salary in cryptocurrency, but four BitPay employees (including the CEO) get their entire paycheck in Bitcoin. However, they saw the possibilities this feature could bring to most companies with Bitcoin-friendly employees and decided to release it to the public.

Tony Gallippi

“For the longest time the hard question was ‘How do I buy Bitcoin? Now the answer is easy: ‘Ask your employer'”, Tony Gallippi, BitPay’s chief executive, says in a statement.

However, according to Bryan Krohn, the firm’s CFO, this new feature also clarifies the tax question around Bitcoin. “Since all payroll and withholding taxes are taken out first from the employee’s gross income, Bitcoins can be sent from the net pay tax-free, and the employer’s gross income reporting to the IRS remains unchanged“, he explained.

After the API release, the icing on the cake could only be another good news: BitPay also announced it has surpassed 20,000 approved merchants, which are now accepting Bitcoin across the world. This group includes the newcomers Zynga and PrivateFly.com, but the company is actually adding almost 1,000 new merchants per week, a rate that will surely bring a massive growth in 2014.

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Maria is an experienced journalist currently living in the UK. She has been writing about Bitcoin and the altcoin universe since 2013. She is also a member of the Lifeboat Foundation's New Money Systems Board and a big cryptocurrency supporter.